Poetry as Prophecy

The recent idea to divert Mississippi River water (over objections of people who live there) to the Colorado River System reminds me of the bizarre no-music ballet scene in the film Amadeus. It seems more vital to greatly reduce GHGs (greenhouse gas emissions) instead, even if fossil fuel companies resist. I recall a story about a German noble who set all the clocks in his city-state to his own eccentric time – ignoring everyone else on Earth. Regarding climate reality and unreality, this is what Big Oil has been doing for too long.

Below, my 2014 poem “Global Warming Serpent,” from the book Industrial Oz, is in Satan's voice. I’m not saying Big Oil is Satan. I’m saying Big Oil has been used by energies that, for insanely selfish reasons, have so far chosen to harm instead of help.

I'm grateful my last blog post (on water issues) had over a thousand views.

I’m grateful to editors Adeline Johns-Putra of Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China, and Kelly Sultzbach of University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, for a positive review of this blog in The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Climate (March 23, 2022): “Starbuck also writes about his dreams (one describes koalas with human voices asking for a seat at the United Nations!) [ . . . ]" They noted, “If idiosyncratic, the blog’s homespun nature offers, to its audience, an effective, comprehensive, and multifaceted picture of the personal impact of diminished fish stocks in American rivers.”

I’m grateful to Pamela S. Ellis for asking me to provide a short review of Climate Connection: American Student Voices, featuring the “twenty-three top climate student essay finalists in the 2022 National Climate Essay Student Competition” along with “inaugural works of the 2019, 2020, and 2021 National Climate Student Essayists included [to] demonstrate a climate urgency for a response trajectory synchronizing individual concerns, present-day humanity, and biodiversity survival realities.”

"Global Warming Serpent" fits recent news about many rivers: WION Climate Tracker | Reports: 66 rivers [dry] up in China [ . . . ], "Heatwave: 13 rivers in England at lowest level ever recorded [ . . . ]," and "The world's rivers are drying up from extreme weather. See how 6 look from space" [Colorado River, Yangtze River, Rhine River, River Po, Loire River, and Danube River].

Global Warming Serpent

 “Study: California Drought Most Severe Dry Spell in at least 1,200Years”-  Alex Emslie in KQED Science, 12/4/14

Soon, there will be no
rain on a dry riverbed
or wild jasmine in summer.

Together we shall desecrate land
as sex-starved soldiers
desecrate virgins.

In my name
we will kill circles, songs, light,
feet, voices, trees, rivers,

children, parents, lovers
and, most of all,
capacity to resist.

We will corrupt the Nile,
Amazon, Yangtze, Mississippi,
Ob, Yenisei, Yellow River,

Congo, Amur, Parana,
Lena, Mackenzie, Niger,
Mekong, Volga, Murray-Darling,

and Rio-Grande.
Glaciers will melt.
Groundwater will be fracked

until pure water costs more than gas.
There will be no end
until permanent damage is done

to the blue gem you call home.
Do you doubt me?
Does sky have nerve endings?

Can your rock breathe?